


a constant reminder

by plinys



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 02:17:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5316539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are paragraphs upon her skin, the final words of her soulmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a constant reminder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [isloremipsumafterall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isloremipsumafterall/gifts).



> For a fic swap with the lovely Beej, who asked for a Eliza/Hamilton soulmate au, and reminded me that Hamilton was unable to shut up even as he lay dying.

 

She learns the feel of the letters before the meaning of the words.

The blank script, slanted and rushed, that layers down over her ribcage. There’s so many words, words she has no way of understanding just yet. But she will stand there, staring at her reflection in the mirror trying to make sense of the backwards letters. As she traces the curve of each letter with her fingers.

It is proof, that her soulmate is somewhere out there.

That her soulmate will one day leave her, his final words, a rush upon her flesh.

One night when she’s feeling particularly bold, she asks Angelica what the words upon her skin mean. Her sister is older than her by just a year, but wiser and well-read. If there’s anyone she trusts with the identity of her soulmate it is her sister.

Though she is so caught up in her own hopes, her own longing for her future, that she misses the way her sister freezes ever so slightly at the sight of her soul mark. The way her hand hovers just over her own side for the briefest of moments, before falling limply to her side. Before reading Eliza the words written on her body.

\---

They say it is impossible to know who your soulmate is until the last moment. That one simply has to trust that the person they love with all their heart has a soul that is twin to their own.

But she knows who hers is within moments of meeting him.

Hamilton. It has to be Hamilton.

He speaks in paragraphs, never stopping to even take a breath. He is eloquent, never stopping, always rushing for him. That will be the way he dies, unable to stop talking for a moment, to remember to struggle for one last breath.

She knows that with certainty.

 Call it woman’s intuition or a lovesick heart. As she reads his letters in her room late at night by the glow of the candle. The endless pages that he writes for her, declarations of love from the front lines. He tells of a longing he feels deep inside of himself, a longing that she feels in her own heart mirror by his words.

This is surely what they’ve talked about, in all the stories, knowing another’s soul at glance.

And she feels, through reading his letters, the essence of his character.

She knows that Alexander Hamilton belongs to her. That God has given her this man to love with all of her being.

\---

She does not see his soul mark until their wedding night.

As a precursor to their impending union, she hunts on his body for words that sound like her own. Proof of their fate. Stilling as the moonlight hits his skin and she finds the words.

There’s just one, in a handwriting that reminds her of her own, if she focuses on it long enough. His name, _Alexander,_ written across his bicep.

She presses a kiss to the mark, a promise of her own. She’ll call him _Alex_ or _dearest_ or _Mr. Hamilton,_ if she’s feeling coy, but never his full name. She won’t force him to hear her last words, until it’s too late to take them back.

Only then does she feel him sigh underneath her, hands tightening desperately at her waist, where they had been tracing her own mark moments before. As he pulls her down towards him, showing her the ways of his love.

It is later, once their marriage has been consummated, and her very soul reborn anew with Hamilton guiding her into his own sense of absolution. That she finds the other words, written in a hand unfamiliar to her, across his lower back. Her husband turns over before she can properly read them, but the impact is there, and with a pang she knows at once that those words were not hers.

She does not ask about those words, whose they are or what they say, she does not dare to.

Though years later, when a letter brings her husband to tears, she finally beings to understand what he had never been willing to admit to her.

The words on his back will have long faded before she is ever given a chance to read what is transcribed upon him.

\---

Her fingers scrub at her skin until they bleed. Until she’s rubbed raw, and it hurts, everything hurts, but it’s still there staring at her as dark as day, in a handwriting she wishes she didn’t recognize anymore.

Tears make the letters blur in her eyes, but she knows they are still there, and when the tears subside there his words will be.

 The water is unable to wash away the marks that are forever branded upon her, the mark of _him_. The man that she had loved, that a part of her believes one day she might love again, but at the moment cannot even stand to look at him.

If this is what it means to have a soulmate then she wishes that God would take it all back.

She says his name deliberately that night, forcing the words tight out of her throat. One word, _Alexander_ , just to see that brief hint of hope mixed with worry in his eyes. Then refuses to say anything else to him.

The house feels stifling in the silence, but this is the only revenge she can take, short of forcing him out from his home. And for all the shame and disgrace she feels, even she is not so cruel as to cast her soulmate out.

For she knows eventually she will find a way to forgive him.

It will just take time, and loss.

\---

This is the moment she loses him.

A moment she had known was coming from the beginning, since she was a little girl staring in a mirror trying to read the letters on her skin, but now to hear them from his lips – feels as though she is the one bleeding out upon the ground.

She presses one last kiss to his lips, willing him to stop speaking to save his strength, whispers, “Alexander,” across the space between them one last time.


End file.
